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Football London
Football London
Sport
Tashan Deniran-Alleyne

What happened with Aubameyang, Bellerin, Smith Rowe and Saka in Arsenal training ahead of Leeds

Spirits remain high in the Arsenal squad ahead of Sunday's Premier League meeting against Leeds United.

And that's despite suffering back-to-back defeats against Wolves and Aston Villa - both away from home - which has seen Mikel Arteta's side slip to 11th in the table.

As things stand, Arsenal 's only chance of playing European football next season will be to win the Europa League.

That would be the dream scenario as not only would that be another trophy to add to the cabinet, but it would also finally mean a return to the Champions League after a long four-year absence.

But speaking to reporters before the Leeds United clash, Arteta has revealed that he has no plans to prioritise the Europa League just yet.

"The priority is Leeds and then we go back to Europe," the Spaniard said in his pre-match press conference. "It’s a competition that we know can give us access to what we want.

"There is still a long way to go. It's still a very strange year as well with the locations where we are going to play those games. And let’s go step by step."

With that being said, the challenge for the Arsenal squad is to return to winning ways against Leeds this weekend.

Ahead of the game at the Emirates Stadium the likes of Gabriel Magalhaes, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, Rob Holding, Alexandre Lacazette, Bukayo Saka, and Emile Smith Rowe were put through their paces at the club's London Colney training base.

At one point in the session, it was team blue vs bibs in a small-sided game.

As spotted in a behind the scenes of Arsenal's training session video uploaded to YouTube, at around the 5.21-minute mark, the winning team is revealed to have been the latter following a penalty shootout.

Clearly very happy with the outcome, several members of the winning team came together for a group celebration.

This included Aubameyang, Saka, Reiss Nelson, Smith Rowe, Eddie Nketiah, Hector Bellerin, Martin Odegaard, Dani Ceballos, and Pablo Mari as they all did a knee slide in front of the camera operator.

Nicolas Pepe was late to join in on the celebrations, as he shouted "yes" whilst performing a fist-pump right at the end of the video clip.

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